Picture Essays

We dream of works of art and social realism that have the power
to change men and transform society — Danny Lyon, 1974

Why photographs?

When activist photography appeared on the scene in the early 1960’s we assumed that a revolution was at hand. Here was a medium that was realistic, easily artistic, and democratically available to anyone that could afford the one dollar cost of a roll of bulk loaded Tri-X. The marriage of the B&W photograph with the offset printing press was a marriage made in heaven; for the realistic picture could be reproduced and available to thousands for a reasonable amount of cash. This happy marriage should have spawned dozens of picture magazines helping to radicalize America and putting the power of the press into thousands of individual hands. This did not happen. Instead the explosion of interest in photography spurned few magazines, but hundreds of art galleries instead. Today, galleries, not magazines, have become the major venue for exhibiting pictures. Photography itself has been distorted and changed from what it should have been, into many things it was never meant to be. Photography works best when it does what it is uniquely qualified to do as a medium: reproduce the real world.

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Search for:

Who are we?
Where do we come from?
Where are we going?

This generation born in war, born in the jail cells of the South, born at the Pentagon march, watches in disbelief as the country is paved over, malls replacing corn fields, synthetic food replacing corn, cash replacing value. What has become of us? Is the country brain dead? Is this what we have done with our freedom? Our greatest surviving value is greed. Is that what our legacy will be? What shall we tell the children?

The 16mm Films of Danny Lyon, preserved as high resolution scans

After his ground breaking work as a photojournalist in the 1960’s, Danny Lyon turned to films, making a series of non-fiction films in the 1970’s and 1980’s. With the recent recognition of the 2016 de Young/Whitney retrospective, funds were provided to preserve these remarkable 16mm films. High resolution digital scans were made from the original A&B negative rolls under the close supervision of the artist. The DVD covers themselves, first made for VHS tapes, have been recognized for their power and realism, and are on display at the San Francisco Museum of Art show which opened November 3rd, 2016.

These are great digital copies of some of the best non-fiction films of the seventies and eighties, exclusively available from Bleak Beauty.

The entire body of Danny Lyon 16mm film work can also be streamed on Vimeo. The sixties meets the twenty first century.View Bleak Beauty Films